China's Repression Still Haunts Uyghur Exiles: A Researcher's Testimony

Last updated: 21 September 2026

This Ramadan, Yalkun Uluyol — China researcher at Human Rights Watch — broke his fast alone, separated from his father by thousands of miles and the bars of a Chinese prison. His account, published March 18, 2026, offers a rare personal window into the lived reality of the Uyghur diaspora, and the way Beijing's repression does not stop at its borders.

A Family Torn Apart

In June 2018, Uluyol lost contact with his father, Memet Yaqup. He later learned his father had been sentenced to 16 years in prison — one of hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs incarcerated simply for their identity, religion, or family connections to critics abroad. His uncles, cousins, and other relatives are also serving sentences ranging from 15 years to life.

Since late 2016, the Chinese government has conducted mass arbitrary detention, forced labor, surveillance, and cultural erasure in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region — violations the UN and multiple governments have described as crimes against humanity.

"I posted a photo of my newborn daughter on social media, hoping someone back home might see it and share our joy. Instead, police interrogated several people simply because of that one image of me holding my baby."

— Yalkun Uluyol, Human Rights Watch China Researcher

Transnational Repression Reaches Into the Diaspora

What makes Uluyol's testimony particularly significant is its documentation of transnational repression — the way Beijing's security apparatus pursues dissidents across borders. When he and other diaspora Uyghurs demanded information about disappeared relatives, Chinese police threatened and intimidated them. Some were coerced into gathering intelligence on their own communities.

Uluyol's Douyin account was banned after he posted a baby photo. His wife's parents, still in Xinjiang, dared not contact him for fear of surveillance. When his daughter Nurbanu died at age 2 from an illness in November 2023, his father never knew she had existed.

The Mosque That No Longer Exists

Uluyol describes his hope of returning to the mosque in his hometown where he last prayed at Eid in 2016 — only to note that Chinese authorities demolished it in 2019. The destruction of religious sites is part of a documented campaign to erase Uyghur cultural and spiritual identity across Xinjiang.

Despite everything, his commentary ends with defiance: "Because I believe we will survive. We will rebuild our lives — and even our mosques — and thrive once again, because no tyranny lasts forever."

Sources

HRW Commentary: China's Repression Still Haunts Uyghur Exiles (March 18, 2026)

HRW Report: Protected No More — Uyghurs in Türkiye (November 2025)